The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is developing a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system using a physical layer based on globally applicable evolved universal terrestrial radio access (E-UTRA). A mobile terminal or station (MS), also referred to as User Equipment (UE), may use a measurement based on a transmission point (TP)-specific reference signal as a metric to determine if a radio link with the TP is in synchronization or out of synchronization by determining whether reliable transmission of a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) codeword with specific downlink message formats can be supported over the link.